this is but note of preparation—the day when the
scuppers that are now fitting like great dry
thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red. All these
busy figures between decks, dimly seen bending
at their work in smoke and fire, are as nothing
to the figures that shall do work here of another
kind in smoke and fire, that day. These steam-
worked engines alongside, helping the ship by
travelling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron
plates about, as though they were so many leaves
of trees, would be rent limb from limb if they
stood by her for a minute then. To think that
this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank
and oaken chest, can ever swim or roll! To think
that any force of wind and wave could ever break
her! To think that wherever I see a glowing red-
hot iron point thrust out of her side from within
—as I do now, there, and there, and there!—and
two watching men on a stage without, with bared
arms and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely,
and repeat their blows until it is black and flat,
I see a rivet being driven home, of which there
are many in every iron plate, and thousands upon
thousands in the ship! To think that the difficulty
I experience in appreciating the ship's size
when I am on board, arises from her being a
series of iron tanks and oaken chests, so that
internally she is ever finishing and ever beginning,
and half of her might be smashed, and yet
the remaining half suffice and be sound. Then,
to go over the side again and down among the
ooze and wet to the bottom of the dock, in the
depths of the subterranean forest of dog-shores
and stays that hold her up, and to see the
immense mass bulging out against the upper light,
and tapering down towards me, is, with great
pains and much clambering, to arrive at an
impossibility of realising that this is a ship at all,
and to become possessed by the fancy that it
is an enormous immovable edifice set up in an
ancient amphitheatre (say, that at Verona), and
almost filling it! Yet what would even these things
be, without the tributary workshops and their
mechanical powers for piercing the iron plates—
four inches and a half thick—for rivets, shaping
them under hydraulic pressure to the finest
tapering turns of the ship's lines, and paring
them away, with knives shaped like the beaks of
strong and cruel birds, to the nicest requirements
of the design! These machines of
tremendous force, so easily directed by one attentive
face and presiding hand, seem to me to have
in them something of the retiring character of
the Yard. "Obedient monster, please to bite
this mass of iron through and through, at equal
distances, where these regular chalk-marks are,
all round." Monster looks at its work, and
lifting its ponderous head, replies, "I don't
particularly want to do it; but if it must be
done——!" The solid metal wriggles out, hot
from the monster's crunching tooth, and it is
done. "Dutiful monster, observe this other mass
of iron. It is required to be pared away, according
to this delicately lessening and arbitrary
line, which please to look at." Monster (who
has been in a reverie) brings down its blunt head,
and, much in the manner of Doctor Johnson,
closely looks along the line—very closely, being
somewhat near-sighted. "I don't particularly
want to do it; but if it must be done——!"
Monster takes another near-sighted look, takes
aim, and the tortured piece writhes off, and falls,
a hot tight-twisted snake, among the ashes. The
making of the rivets is merely a pretty round
game, played by a man and a boy, who put red
hot barley-sugar in a Pope Joan board, and
immediately rivets fall out of window; but the tone
of the great machines is the tone of the great
Yard and the great country: "We don't
particularly want to do it; but if it must be
done——!"

How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles
can ever be held by such comparatively little
anchors as those intended for her and lying near
her here, is a mystery of seamanship which I will
refer to the wise boy. For my own part, I should
as soon have thought of tethering an elephant
to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the
Zoological Gardens to my shirt-pin. Yonder in
the river, alongside a hulk, lie two of this ship's
hollow iron masts. They are large enough for
the eye, I find, and so are all her other appliances.
I wonder why only her anchors look small.

I have no present time to think about it, for
I am going to see the workshops where they
make all the oars used in the British Navy. A
pretty large pile of building, I opine, and a pretty
long job! As to the building, I am soon
disappointed, because the work is all done in one loft.
And as to a long job—what is this? Two
rather large mangles with a swarm of butterflies
hovering over them? What can there be in the
mangles that attracts butterflies?

Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not
mangles, but intricate machines, set with knives
and saws and planes, which cut smooth and
straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut
such a depth, and now miss cutting altogether,
according to the predestined requirements of the
pieces of wood that are pushed on below them:
each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is
roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes
its final leave of far-off forests, and sails for
England. Likewise I discern that the butterflies
are not true butterflies, but wooden shavings,
which, being spirted up from the wood
by the violence of the machinery, and kept in
rapid and not equal movement by the impulse
of its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and
rise and fall, and conduct themselves as like
butterflies as heart could wish. Suddenly the
noise and motion cease, and the butterflies drop
dead. An oar has been made since I came in,
wanting the shaped handle. As quickly as I can
follow it with my eye and thought, the same oar
is carried to a turning lathe. A whirl and a
Nick! Handle made. Oar finished.

The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this
machinery need no illustration, but happen to
have a pointed illustration to-day. A pair of oars